Bendy and smeared in ash, a new holy father

In India to film a pilgrimage of 80m, Dominic West toys with converting to Hinduism, writes Jessica Brinton

I
’m sitting by a fire, surrounded by dreadlocked holy men and the actor Dominic West. The location is the banks of the Ganges near Allahabad in northern India, and we’re at the 2013 Kumbh Mela, reputed to be the largest gathering of humans on the planet.

It’s a Hindu Disneyland, fuelled by the gods and hyped by devotion. For 55 days this spot — supposedly where Lord Vishnu spilt a drop of the nectar of immortality — becomes a place of pilgrimage for 80m devotees from across India, though some say the gathering was invented for political reasons in the mid-19th century.

West, 43, is here with two of his best friends from Eton: Sir James Mallinson, a respected Sanskrit scholar, and Rupert Smith-Bingham, a film maker.

It feels very early 1990s — the era when many contemplative public- school boys journeyed east looking for answers. But as Smith-Bingham explains, the three decided